


Crown of the gutter

by Hashilavalamp



Series: We reap what we sow [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, German unification, Historical Hetalia, Illustrated, Prussian March Revolution, Spring of Nations 1848, awkward big brother gilbert happens, references to second Schleswig war 1864
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 05:43:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6892429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hashilavalamp/pseuds/Hashilavalamp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The spring of 1848 is ripe with revolutions and Prussia has to discover that he himself carries the seed within him. When riots break out, he is determined to find the root to put an end to it - only to find that the cause is something he can hardly stop. And perhaps something that he might want to encourage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crown of the gutter

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot stop. I just really like writing Historical Hetalia! I've tried to keep things accurate, but there's likely gonna be some inaccuracies at one point or another, I hope you enjoy it anyway! ;u;

1848  
March.

 

The spring air tastes of revolution.

Heavy metallic scents of unrest and dissatisfaction cloy the air, and when Gilbert inhales it, it is like little flakes of rust in his lungs. Unbreathable without nausea sweeping through him.

They have all felt it, ever since France lost his head first and then let that pesky little Corse rage across their continent there has been a shift in their people – and he remembers that some of them wept in joy because their minds shifted with them, like a veil that was lifted from their eyes and allowed them to see themselves.

But Francis had shown them early on that there is also a price to pay for the foolishnes, and they all were aware that not a single of them would remain unscathed as their bosses fretted and tried to hold the tide back.

And now they are all toppling over at once.

Italy, France, Denmark, Austria, Hungary. Poland and the Confederation are growing restless as well, boiling like a witch’s cauldron.

Prussia had stood aside, tall and proud from head to toe, and watched as one by one they all caught the revolutionary fever, falling apart from the inside in strife he’d always scoffed at. 

He must have gotten too close to them and breathed in the pollution, he’s thought. When none of the humans have an eye on him, he has placed his gloved hand on his chest and felt the incessant buzzing beneath the fabric and the skin spread thin, a ball of nervous energy in his heart that waits for the impulse to release.  
He’s wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of it, but it was hard to ignore how clammy his hands suddenly felt when he realized that he too carries the seed in him.

He is no revolutionary.

He is no revolutionary, he has always believed in structure and in keeping power in the hands of the capable, in the hands of those who can handle him. He regards the events in the other countries with distaste for the chaos and the audacity of the governed to throw themselves into battle for something already proven to foster nothing but more dissatisfaction –  
he sneers at the revolutions.

So why, why is he standing on this square in Berlin, amidst the riots?

The noise is deafening, with gunshots ringing out and the people shouting in protest, in sheer rage and terror, a sickening cacophony. Usually Gilbert is not fazed by the mess, by barricades or blood, but it is another matter entirely, a quake of new magnitutde, when these are his people falling to their own army’s bullets because now he doesn’t know on what to focus as everything is reeling oh god oh god god god—

He stumbles when some panicked citizen shoves him aside without regard for who he is, slipping on the dirtied ground and trying to crawl to the seeming safety of the barricades. Like a trampled insect, desperately scrambling for survival and Gilbert feels sick with sympathy.  
Everything had been peaceful mere hours ago; protests in the street alright, but peaceful protests. Nothing that doesn’t go away if you wait just long enough for it to pass, like a new fashion trend. So what complete fool let that shot go? What godforsaken soul had made the crowd go mad? Didn’t he know that crowds are single-minded and stupid beasts and that any provocation can set them off?!

The Prussian stumbles again, his feet carrying him down a narrow and dirty alley where the smoke can’t get to his head and the terrible taste leaves his mouth for at least a few inhales. Weakened limbs, he leans his head against the brick wall until his head has stopped pounding like it’s going to explode and until the beast in his stomach has settled. He is too proud and dignified to vomit into some alley. He’s above that!

But God, what do they want?

What do they want?, he asks himself bitterly as he takes deep breaths and finally feels steady enough to stand on his two feet easily. That terrible buzzing in his chest just won’t subside, so he can’t help but wonder if this is what it feels like for a human to have a heart attack – your chest seizing up and an awful tingling in his limbs, just that it is much worse than it has been all these months that he had turned two blind eyes.  
He curses his humanity, that little shard of him that puts him just out of reach of his people’s desires; if he didn’t have a mind of his own and were purely nation, then he’d know, he’d unerstand what they want from him! He wouldn’t be sick in an alley!  
Think think think, what is it–

Focus on the impulse. On the choir in his mind.

Something about unity, of course, of course. How could he forget.

He caught a few words, bits and snippets, through the years. Delusions of unity, the strange notion that’s been festering– The chaos gives him headaches that make it hard for him to focus, thoughts swimming in his mind.

Trying to keep his bruised ego intact, Gilbert eventually slinks out of his little hiding spot again to head for Friedrich Wilhelm. Damn bastard should be able to explain just how things got so out of control so quickly, right? Means he has to return to the square, but he can handle that now. Can’t let people think him a coward.

The pandemonium swells in his ears with each step closer to the fighting. He steps over a corpse, picking his way through the twisting human bodies. Some of them turn to stare at him for just a moment, the man with the silvery-blond hair, red eyes, and infantry uniform. But then they just turn back to their little battles, allowing him to proceed.  
He closes in on the palace where Friedrich-Wilhelm must’ve cooped himself up, Gilbert realizes with a grin after a while, and he breaks into a little sprint through the crowds, through the sweat and the blood and the despair, and he will be there and can demand answers for this, for this travesty—!

He lets out an undignified yelp when all of a sudden his foot catches on something and he falls to the ground, landing flat on his face on the cobblestone. Vessels burst, he feels the gush of hot blood dripping from his nose when he raises his upper body to glare at whatever dared to get into his way.

For a second he falters because when he looks back he sees it was neither corpse nor object that had stopped him in his tracks, but a little bundle of a child that can’t be much older than five.  
The thing cries loudly as it tries to dodge the feet of the adults, shielding its head with its tiny little hands, and the Prussian is ready to let his heart bleed and feel sympathy for this abandoned victim as well, when the child pulls its hands away from its face and looks straight at him.

The buzzing falls silent for a second.

The little boy’s blue eyes meet his with an unnatural calmness, an understanding that exceeds that of a human, and Prussia understands at once that they are kin and the feeling in his chest finally pours out white-hot, irreparable.

The noise around him turns into static in his ears as if he had entered the eye of a storm with just this one glance and he stares at the child.

It’s so tiny. And barely of substance, barely here in this world, but he knows this face.

He’s literally stumbled upon a nation among the dirt of a revolutionary uprising, and it fills him with dread when it dawns upon him what the appearance of this bundle means, for himself and the future of this people.  
There’s a nudge of his heart, a fragile trembling hope, and he knows that it is what his people desire.

This little thing.

Germany.

Without another look, Gilbert pushes himself to his feet and runs as though the devil were on his heels, coming to collect his debts.

.

.

.

“Report!”

The man at the desk flinches and after a moment of hesitation turns to meet his glare, a nervous smile tugging at his lips. He’s sweating, and his fingernails bitten down.  
If Friedrich or Luise could see this, they would lower their eyes in shame of their successor.

“Gilbert…? It’s curious, I thought—given that you are the nation, you of all people would know what is happening! It is not I who ought to explain himself in the face of such disorder, and I do not approve of your language. I am still your king—“

“And I am your nation itself!” Prussia interrupts with a voice like a knife. “You will answer to me if I ask something of you, and you will do so without question or complaint, for your nation! For I am not Gilbert, I am the Kingdom of Prussia!”  
There is no room granted for argument, and stares down the weak man before him until he falters in his seat and averts his gaze as the one defeated.

“The commotion outside is… they want reforms, Gil– Prussia. You must have surely seen that the shots fired were but an accident. A fateful accident at an occasion we had had under control, there was nothing—“

“Get to the point! I know there is more to it than pretty little reforms and demands to us! Spit it out before I force it out of you, you undeserving worm! Antworte!” Gilbert roars and grabs his king by the front of his uniform, letting his despair get the best of him and dragging the frazzled man up with perfect ease despite the deceptively scrawny appearance of his body.

Friedrich Wilhelm stammers around for a moment as if he thought he were above being physically attacked by his country like so many stupid men before him, and then he finally confirms Prussia’s fear.

Even here, even here the German people ask for a unified Germany.

Ein vereinigtes Deutschland.

.

.

.

Under Prussian leadership, Friedrich-Wilhelm adds with a huff of anger and indignation once Gilbert remembers to let go of him.

.

.

.

Prussia is no revolutionary, he thinks bitterly when he hears what things Friedrich-Wilhelm promises the people of Berlin, all the reforms and little freedoms he will grant them as they proceed through the streets on the day of the 21st of March. All of course prepared in advance.

The city mourns the people it sacrificed, having laid out the dead bodies for him and his king to see, so it is a delightfully quiet procession that allows Gilbert to let his dissatisfaction boil.  
This is why he despises revolutions. Dead people, hardly any gain. He knows that after this little procession, Friedrich-Wilhelm will meet up with his elite friends and deny anything he has promised in the morning, because that is the kind of man he is.

Gilbert fumbles with the bothersome little adornment on his uniform in the cursed colors he used to pride himself on but now only make him think of blue eyes. Friedrich-Wilhelm made him wear it, to make a good impression on the shaken people. Red, black, and gold.  
He very well recalls Austria and his raving about the madness that gripped the people at the beginning of the century, of the wild demands and the flag they claimed for themselves under which they sought a “German unity”. German unity! Pah!

What a terrifying thought.

They eventually come to a stop at the cemetery for proper mourning. A heavy blanket of silence smothering the people, oppressive and deafening, peaceful. But in the crowd Gilbert spots a little child, fighting its way to the first lines as nobody else seems to take notice of him yet.  
And over the drone of the funeral eulogy, he hears the cry of “Bruder!”

.

.

.

A year passes by, and Gilbert asks Friedrich-Wilhelm about the endeavor, the thing with the Germans and their offered crown, with clammy hands and the taste of rust on his tongue. The blood on his fabric isn’t dried yet when the king laughs.

He’d never pick up a crown from the gutter!

Gilbert should smile along. And yet for some reason, it resonates in a sense of disappointment that washes over Prussia in the face of that rejection.  
It settles heavily, deep in his bones, among the twisted roots of what has sprouted from his heart in the past few months. Over the revolutions that rose and fell, those that he himself violently suppressed just a month ago and whose death clings to his hands now, earning him the resentment of his own citizens and the hatred of his own siblings.

He’s grown so weary of them, of everyone. Of erratic kings and of those who always just meddle with him anyway, like he’s too different to be included but similar enough to be kicked into the dirt. Stubborn Saxony. Austrian Bavaria. Audacious Baden. The whole godforsaken lot of them. The ones to whom he was a laughing stock drowning in his own waters until he showed them just how well he could use the sword in his hand.  
Goddamn nagging Brandenburg who points out all the ways in which he is wrong, all the reasons why he should care for that little child. Brandenburg who always always knows better.

If he, if he killed them…

So maybe he shouldn’t fear what will come. The little idea that has grown from them.

Maybe one day he will have another brother.

(But for now Gilbert will kick the child, should he see it again.)

 

1864  
November.

The two figures by the ocean huddle deeper into their coats as they stare out to sea.

“Damn cold. I hate the Baltic sea” one of them mutters crabbily and raises his gloved hands to his face to breathe on them and capture the warmth of his own breath for just a few precious moments. His companion merely snorts in response but likewise tugs at the collar of his coat to protect his neck against the bite of the freezing air. He is used to these winds. “Don’t make such a face, Roderich. It doesn’t make your mug any more pleasant to look at, and it’s terribly unbecoming of a victor.”

Roderich bristles both from the cold and the insult, and hastily pushes up his glasses that slipped down the bridge of his nose. “And you should practice what you preach some day. Some humility might make you less of a pain to be around, Gilbert.”

Gilbert’s red eyes narrow dangerously, however he chooses to remain silent. Not like this is the first time he’s been told this in recent times. Technically he knows that he should not let it get to his head, that he should be the embodiment of his virtues, but the exhilaration of battle and subsequent victory still burns in his veins, warming him from the inside like a little treacherous sun.  
He almost forgot the sensation of this particular ecstasy, so starved that he almost forgot just how terribly sweet the fruit tastes, overpowering the lingering dirt and the dust of decades.

And oh, how it got to his head.

He’s starting to feel like himself again, little by little as if he awoke from a long slumber that he fell into some time last century, rejuvenated by Danish blood so that he can’t even feel the sustained wounds anymore.

Roderich shoots him a suspicious glare when he snickers.

“Cut it out, Prussia. I am serious about this” he spits and scrunches up his nose, chin pushed forward a little. Then his eyes slide past Gilbert and the expression softens just a fraction, only a worried crease in his forehead remaining. “You will be a terrible influence on him.”

Gilbert follows his gaze and watches as the little boy there plays with the waves, running towards them and letting out a delighted peal of laughter whenever the ocean turns the tables again and pushes the waves back at him.  
He’s growing now, but so far from adulthood.

Gilbert wonders if Roderich remembers.

“Why is he even here?” Roderich adds with a little sniff.

“Because the brat is completely crazy about beaches for some reason, really, it’s beyond me” the Prussian responds casually, frowning. “It is a fine beach when it’s not fall to be fair though, and this belongs to him now. Best if he becomes acquaintanced with his lands early on and learns to not get washed away by the tides.”

Roderich seems to remain unconvinced by this explanation and shuffles his feet a little, his expression souring instantly when more sand gets onto his boots. It gets worse when the boy throws a glance over his shoulder towards them, the fresh wounds on his face and the stitches prominent even in the dim light of the early fall of evening.

It’s the price the child has to pay for gaining substance. For anyone to be able to see him as he is. The price he pays to be a nation, sacrificing his brothers and gaining a life instead. What a brutal exchange Gilbert forces upon him.

The silence drags on, and for some reason Gilbert feels pressured to say something. He has no idea why, he has thought himself above pressure of speech, and yet… Maybe it is the drunken feeling of victory that makes him so inclined to loosen his tongue.  
So he voices a little… concern.

“Would you rather he were in your care then? Are you considering having a proper little family? With Erszébet perhaps?” he inquires, letting out a bark of a laugh when Roderich’s face instantly turns an incredibly unflattering shade of pink. He stutters vaguely indignant sounding words as he tries to regain his composure, the blotchy skin of his face giving him away.  
“Don’t be ridiculous!” he eventually forces out. “I have no such plans of course, and if something along those lines were part of my agenda that would be none of your business, Prussia!”

“It would be, because that is my brother you would be stealing from me, and while you didn’t make a complete fool of yourself in the war, you were only assisting me. It was I who crushed that Danish fool, and Germany knows to admire that. He knows that true power lies in military, not marriage” Gilbert sneers with a mocking edge and a beating heart. “And if I may remind you, it was you who anguished about that terrible ‘Germany unity’ back then!”

The Austrian lets out a sigh and runs his fingers through his disheveled hair. “Just as you did. You are being unfair and unkind and while I expect nothing better from you, I would appreciate it if you could keep your mouth shut if you already feel incapable of displaying some manners. The weather and temperature are irritating enough; I don’t need your pathetic gloating too.”

“Gloating! I am just ensuring your ego doesn’t swell to completely obnoxious levels again!” Gilbert mocks freely now, feigning a dramatic expression of distress before his mouth pulls into a shark-teeth grin. He laughs again and gives Roderich a slap on the back that is just this side of threatening instead of friendly.  
“You’d do well to remember that.”

“Would I? You are only goading me anyway. You know I am not happy with the new arrangement, and that I know what you did. I’m not that blind, I know what you are planning!”

One of the most annoying traits of Roderich is how he always states the obvious in such a petulant manner that you would think he is the child. Even more annoying that he still points out all the right things, so Gilbert finds himself coiling involuntarily like a snake ready to defend itself.

Before Gilbert can slip in another threat to his temporary ally, the child returns to them; must’ve grown tired of his wave chasing and stomps towards them through the sand, swiping at the fringe of his bowl cut.

Despite the buried apprehension and downright dislike he still carries in his heart towards the child, Gilbert feels the corners of his mouth twitch up into a smile. No. More of a smirk.  
Smirk sounds more accurate, yes.

“It’s time we head back” the boy says as if it hadn’t been him who kept them here out in the cold at the damn beach in the first place, but he’s forgiven because he learns quickly to speak in a direct, authoritarian tone.  
Mostly forgiven; Gilbert still lightly slaps his cheek and reprimands him. He is still the boy’s superior.

“Address your brother properly, boy” he commands until Germany nods in defeat, then turns to Roderich and fixes his with a stare. “We will go back now, Austria. You may accompany us.”

“How generous” the man grumbles and starts walking back towards civilization and shelter at an angry pace, quickly drawing ahead of them in his vigor to get away from them and the cold. He’s just that terrible with confrontations.

“Do me a favor and never take him as your role model” Gilbert says more to himself to the boy who sticks closely to his side, absently mussing up the already wind-swept hair, earning him a stunned expression from the young thing.  
He quickly recovers as youth is wont to do, and has the audacity to smile at him. “I wouldn’t. I have chosen my brother already. Ich folge nur Preußen.”  
image

In a rush of brotherly affection, Gilbert stretches out his hand again to give the kid a playful punch, before he remembers that he cannot remember any of the other nations ever treating their younger siblings like that. Not if they wanted to display something like love, that is. 

From what he knows, they did other things, like embracing one another, exchanging affectionate gestures. Not the rough treatment of siblings who could never quite stand one another, pushing and shoving each other whenever they could. Push, shove, until it wasn’t fun anymore and the claws came out.  
Not even Brandenburg was ever really his friend.

Now that’s a depressing revelation, a lump in his throat to swallow around.

He pauses in his movement, hand left hanging in the air uselessly until he places it on the boy’s shoulder, cursing the awkwardness of the gesture. Somebody like him should never be so unsure about anything he does, but here he is anyway, awkward and uncertain. He’s cared for this little child for years now and still he doesn’t know what to do with it, how to treat it. It’s goddamn awful and upsetting. In nervousness, he licks his lips, tasting the coarse salt of the sea.

His lungs no longer itch with rust, and what lingers in the air is the fresh scent not of revolution, but of glory.

**Author's Note:**

> I keep imagining Gilbert as the kind of older sibling who is first pretty against the idea of having a younger sibling but once they're there he proceeds to be completely infatuated with them and becomes determined to be a Cool Big Bro.


End file.
